Latest News

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  London develop an open source app to fight its housing shortage

  28 July 2019

  To help fight a housing shortage in the city of London, the mayor's office has teamed up with a pair of design and building firms to create PRISM, an application to help speed up "the design and construction of high-quality factory-built homes" in the city. PRISM, the source code for which is available on GitLab, uses freely-available data to help "architects, local authority planners, and developers to quickly determine viable prefab options for their site." The development of the app was funded by the Greater London Authority as well as Transport for London, housing association L&Q, and private investor-developers Legal & General and Greystar. London's government hopes by combining the tool with prefab construction techniques, builders will be able to meet the demand for 50,000 new homes per year in the city.

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  UNESCO started a project to support OSS in Egypt

  26 June 2019

  The Egyptian National Commission for UNESCO, cooperated with UNESCO, to start a project to support The Open Source Software (OSS) in Egypt; Also to promote the importance of OSS for the developing countries to reach the sustainable development. The project started with an event held last Monday, June 24th, on the headquarter of the Egyptian National Commission for UNESCO; with attendance of many of Egyptian FOSS community members, activists and The Egyptian Platform of Free an Open Source Software (EgyptFOSS). Project’s main goal is to encourage ICT community and Developers to start using OSS and to develop more OSS to help Egypt to reach sustainable development. Also, The project will work with the local community members and activists to encourage small and medium ICT companies and entities and support them to use OSS and build projects using OSS which will make a great impact on the economy. The last Monday event held, with the support of H.E. Mr. Khaled Abdel Ghaffar the ministry of the high education and the national commission president.

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  EgyptFOSS' guide to use FOSS in Universities

  24 June 2019

  Discover now EgyptFOSS' guide to using free and open source software in the Egyptian universities.   The main purpose of this document is to introduce the Universities decision makers to the topic of using the free and open source software (FOSS) and to offer some guidance for the use of free and open source software in Universities.   To Download please use the following link EgyptFOSS GUIDE TO USE FREE AND OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE IN THE EGYPTIAN UNIVERSITIES 1st Edition, October 2018

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  CERN turns to use open source software

  16 June 2019

  CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, revealed more information about Their Microsoft Alternatives project (MAlt), which started a year ago to fully migrate to open source software. The Organization said in a blog post "MAlt’s objective is to put us back in control using open software. It is now time to present more widely this project and to explain how it will shape our computing environment". Also, Added, "The initial objective was to investigate the migration from commercial software products (Microsoft and others) to open-source solutions, so as to minimize CERN’s exposure to the risks of unsustainable commercial conditions". back to March, Microsoft revoked CERN's "academic institution" status. under the new contract, licensing costs have increased more than tenfold. In response, CERN is about to enter a new phase of fully using the open source software in their environment with the first MAlt's migrations. The project’s principles of engagement are to: Deliver the same service to every category of CERN personnel Avoid vendor lock-in to decrease risk and dependency Keep hands on the data Address the common use-cases he first major change coming is a pilot mail Service for the IT department and volunteers this summer, followed by the start of CERN-wide migration. In parallel, some Skype for Business clients and analog phones will migrate to a softphone telephony pilot. Many other products and services are being worked on: evaluations of alternative solutions for various software packages used for IT core services, prototypes and pilots will emerge along the course of the next few years.

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  OpenProject 9 Released

  13 June 2019

  OpenProject announced the release of OpenProject 9. The release introduces a new board view for OpenProject Paid Editions, Also, other features for basic edition like work package templates, customizable work package views for the My Page and more. OpenProject is a collaborative open source project management software. It’s an alternative to proprietary solutions like Trello and Jira. Users can use it for free if it’s for personal use and you set it up (and host it) on your own server. This way, you control your data. Users can use Community edition for free or get access to premium features and priority help using Cloud or Enterprise editions. With the new Scrum and Agile board view, users can easily display their work in a Kanban-style fashion and support their Agile and Scrum teams. Quickly get an overview of their tasks, see who is assigned and rapidly update a work package’s status or version. Users also can choose between a basic board (which allows you to create custom columns), a status board, and a version board. Also, When users create new work packages, it is often helpful to have a template to work with. With OpenProject 9, users can do just that: define templates (e.g. for bugs, risks, tasks) and display the predefined template in the work package description when you create a new work package. To use OpenProject 9 developers create an instance on OpenProject.org or run OpenProject 9 in their own infrastructure using the Installation guidelines for OpenProject.

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  Zorin OS 15 released with Android sync feature

  11 June 2019

  Zorin OS 15 Linux distro has been officially released this month after being in development for the past several months, based on the latest Ubuntu 18.04.2 LTS operating system. Highlights of Zorin OS 15 include Zorin Connect, a new app that lets Android users sync their device's notifications with their personal computer, browse the photos from their phone or tablet, share files and URLs, reply to text messages, control media playback on their PCs, or even use it as a remote control. A new and refreshed look was given to Zorin OS 15 with a beautiful and welcoming desktop theme that adapts throughout the day, switching automatically between the Light and Dark modes. Zorin OS 15 also features support for touchscreens, Night Light to protect your eyes when you're working at night, the latest LibreOffice 6.2 office suite, support for Flatpak universal apps and the Flathub repository, a Do not disturb mode, and a totally revamped Settings app to make configuring Zorin OS a breeze. Among other noteworthy changes, we can mention Nvidia proprietary graphics drivers bundled in the live ISO image, support for color emoji, Mozilla Firefox as default web browser, new system font, support for Thunderbolt 3 devices. Zorin OS 15 is available for download as Core and Ultimate editions only for 64-bit computers using the following Url: zorinos.com/download. The Lite and Education editions will be released in the coming months with support for both 64-bit and 32-bit architectures. Zorin OS 12 users can now upgrade their installations to Zorin OS 15 without reinstalling. https://youtu.be/30BKvLCEdkQ

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  Firefox stops websites and advertisers from tracking users

  10 June 2019

  Mozilla announced that the latest release of Firefox browser will now block third-party tracking cookies by default. The blocking will automatically occur for new users who download the latest Firefox release. You'll notice the feature when you go to the browser's preferences and check "Content Blocking." the default blocking will only be switched on for new Firefox users. It will roll out for existing users in the coming months, but Mozilla wants to first iron out any potential errors that might arise. Existing users who can't wait can switch on the third-party blocking by going to the browser's privacy preferences and clicking on the "Custom" option. Then go to "Cookies" and switch on blocking for third-party trackers. Firefox is also preparing to default block another notorious way online advertisers can track your web activities, which is known as "fingerprinting". These third-party computer scripts can be embedded inside web pages to collect information on your machine's browser settings, such as IP address and browser version, in order to identify your internet presence. Users can download The newest Firefox version from mozilla.org/en/firefox/new/ https://youtu.be/CUo1QB0OCic

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  Robodog: an open source project to build a robot from scratch

  04 June 2019

  A student robotics club at Stanford University released its robodog project, named Stanford Doggo, as an open source project. The goal of the project was to build a robot "from scratch", and the source code and documentation looks sufficient to do so. The robodog robot can walk and trot, hop and jump, dance, and do a backflip. Also, it is a medium size robot. The repository includes detailed instructions, parts lists, and code available on GitHub. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2E82o2pP9Jo